1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system that is used when a customer makes a contract with a service company for maintaining an elevator.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, the maintenance contract for an elevator is roughly divided into a full maintenance contract and a checking contract.
In the full maintenance contract, the contract is made monthly at a fixed charge. The object elevator is checked periodically, for example, at a month or three-month interval. If a maintenance man determines that a replacement of an expendable part is needed as the checked result, the expendable part is replaced with a new one and an abnormal portion is repaired as well. The replacement of the expendable and the repair of the abnormal portion request no additional charge. Any sudden failure is basically repaired at no charge.
In the checking contract, on the other hand, though the object elevator is checked at a fixed period in the same manner as the full maintenance contract, the monthly charge is an addition of a checking fee and a replacing and repairing fee, the latter of which is requested if a maintenance man determines that the replacement and the repair of an expandable are needed and then the customer approves the replacement of the expendable and the repair of the abnormal portion. In addition, any sudden failure is repaired at another charge.
When a customer makes a contract for maintenance with a service company for maintaining an elevator, the customer usually selects one of these two maintenance contracts experimentally through a commercial talk between the service company and the customer.
Some service companies prepare various options for the contract for maintaining an elevator. Those options are selected experimentally through the commercial talk between the service company and the customer as well.
It has been conventionally known an apparatus described in JP-A-7-25557 as an apparatus for creating a repairing plan of an elevator.
A frequency (load) at which a customer's elevator is used depends on some factors, such as the number of the users of the elevator installed in the customer's building, whether or not the elevator is driven continuously for 24 hours, and whether or not it is stopped regularly. Further, some customers need to operate the elevator for 24 hours, while the other customers need to allow the regular stopping of the elevator. Moreover, some customers need to lower the maintenance cost in the range where the minimum quality is kept as much as possible, while the other customers need to keep the maximum maintenance quality even if charged up to some extent.
As described above, the load imposed on the customer's elevator and the requested maintenance quality are quite variable, so that the intervals for the checking period and the replacement of an expendable are requested to be adjusted. That is, the maintenance plan is requested to be finely adjusted.
For this request, it is possible to increase the kinds of the maintenance contracts or prepare various options. However, no approximate means has been heretofore proposed for providing a maintenance plan exactly requested by a customer.